What is Tea?
A: Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by pouring hot or boiling water over
cured or fresh leaves of Camellia sinensis, an evergreen shrub native to
China, India and other East Asian countries.
Tea is also rarely made from the leaves of what?
A: Camellia taliensis.
After water, it is the most widely what?
A: Consumed drink in the world.
Tea has a stimulating effect in humans primarily due to
its what?
A: Caffeine content.
Tea plants are native to where?
A: East Asia and probably originated in the borderlands of southwestern
China and northern Burma.
An early credible record of tea drinking dates to the
third century AD, in a what?
A: A medical text written by Hua Tuo.
It was popularized as a recreational drink during what
Chinese dynasty?
A: The Chinese Tang dynasty.
When did Portuguese priests and merchants introduce it
to Europe?
A: During the 16th century.
During the 17th century, drinking tea became
fashionable among what people?
A: The English, who started to plant tea on a large scale in India.
The term herbal tea refers to drinks not made from
what?
A: Camellia sinensis.
They are the infusions of fruit, leaves, or other plant
parts, such as steeps of what?
A: Rosehip, chamomile, or rooibos.
These may be called tisanes or herbal infusions to
prevent confusion with what?
A: Tea made from the tea plant.
People in ancient Asia ate tea for centuries, perhaps
even millennia, before ever what?
A: Consuming it as a beverage.
The Han dynasty work, "The Contract for a Youth",
written by Wang Bao in 59 BC, contains the first known reference to what?
A: Boiling tea.
Tea was disdained by the Northern dynasty’s
aristocrats, who describe it as a what?
A: A "slaves' drink", inferior to yogurt.
During the Tang dynasty, tea was steamed, then pounded
and what?
A: Shaped into cake form, while in the Song dynasty, loose-leaf tea was
developed and became popular.
The first recorded shipment of tea by a European nation
was in 1607 when the Dutch East India Company did what?
A: It moved a cargo of tea from Macao to Java.
Two years later, the Dutch bought the first assignment
of tea which was from Hirado in Japan to be shipped to where?
A: Europe.
Tea plants are propagated from what?
A: Seed and cuttings.
How long is needed for a plant to bear seed?
A: About 4 to 12 years.
How long before a new plant is ready for harvesting?
A: About three years.
In addition to a zone 8 climate or warmer, tea plants
require at least how much rainfall per year?
A: 127 cm (50 in).
Many high-quality tea plants are cultivated at
elevations of up to what?
A: 1,500 m (4,900 ft) above sea level.
Though at these heights the plants do what?
A: Grow more slowly, they acquire a better flavor.
A tea plant will grow into a tree of up to how tall?
A: 16 m (52 ft) if left undisturbed.
Why are cultivated plants generally pruned to waist
height?
A: For ease of plucking.
Also, the short plants bear more new shoots which
provide what?
A: New and tender leaves and increase the quality of the tea.